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For those joining us late, the special election for South Dakota’s lone House seat (vacated by Janklow) is in less than three weeks. Our candidate is the young but very impressive Stephanie Herseth. This is today’s House Race Hotline: *** The DCCC began a new TV ad, highlighting atty Stephanie Herseth’s (D) support for veterans and military personnel. “Tough,” a 30-second ad, “features several veterans who say Herseth would support a military pay raise for troops in ‘harm’s way’ …

In today’s Wa Po: Immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, many traumatized and fearful U.S. citizens accepted Washington’s new approach with confidence that our leaders would continue to honor international agreements and human rights standards. But in many nations, defenders of human rights were the first to feel the consequences of these changes, and international humanitarian organizations began expressing deep concern to each other and to high-level U.S. military and government officials about the adverse impact of the new American …

Progress Report: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY: The American Progress report also charges it is time to “call on the top Pentagon leadership to resign for the good of the country.” It turns out this call has been taken up by conservatives and progressives alike: Neocon Max Boot writes in this morning’s LA Times, “Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld’s failure to offer his resignation over the Abu Ghraib scandal is sadly typical of the lack of accountability that permeates the U.S. …

Tom DeLay, in his own words. From the Office of the Democratic Whip: “Doing good on a worldwide scale appeals to peace hawks, who are motivated by altruism, not patriotism.” Floor Statement, 4/15/99 “American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.” Floor Statement on Resolution on Peacekeeping Operations in Kosovo, 3/11/99 “Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the …

Dow Jones: The U.S. House on Thursday approved a $218 billion tax bill to permanently extend the 10% income-tax bracket, a core feature of President George W. Bush’s tax cutting agenda. Said Hoyer on the House Floor: “Mr. Speaker, as much as my friends on the Republican side want to create the impression that they are the only ones that support tax cuts, let’s make it clear again this week: Democrats support extending and increasing the 10 percent tax …

Who is it again that supports the troops? Pelosi: Washington, D.C.—House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the unanimous vote in the House Armed Services Committee last night to end the Widows’ Tax: “America’s veterans and their spouses had a great victory last night in the House Armed Services Committee. After months of grassroots organizing by veterans, pressure by House Democrats, and resistance by Republicans, the Committee finally voted to end the shameful Widows’ Tax. …

For those of you wondering what has been going on in the South Dakota Special Election (June 1st), apparently GOP candidate Larry Diedrich has been doing some “selective editing”... never mind… I will just say it—FABRICATING quotes from the Democrat, Stephanie Herseth, and taking her actual quotes out of context. The title of the ad? “Straight Talk”. Here is the story: The ad has a voice over reading a “quote” supposedly from Herseth: voice over: “But just days ago, …

Oh my: It is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home? “Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden? You’re the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept above politics.” Yes, that’s true. I still believe that. My mistake was …

The Hill: Republicans on the Hill are so frustrated with the White House that when Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) criticized the administration at a House GOP meeting last week, the caucus burst into applause. The meeting was only the latest sign in an accumulating body of evidence that lawmakers are unhappy with the way the administration treats them. One GOP lawmaker at the caucus meeting said Hastert “expressed outright dismay with the White House staff for the way …

Can you guess which one: “I don’t know how the hell these people got into our army,” said Colorado Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell after viewing what he called a fraction of the images. “I saw cruel, sadistic torture,” said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who said some of the images were of male prisoners masturbating. She said she saw a man hitting himself against a wall as though to knock himself unconscious. Others said they saw images of corpses, …

Racicot is really giving DeLay a run for his money: “Why should we reward more of the same? Why should we reward miscalculations of what it would take to make the peace?” Kerry asked in an interview with Associated Press Radio. “I think that it’s been one miscalculation after another, frankly. And arrogance that has lost America respect and influence in the world.” [...] “Political attacks come at a price for the military,” Racicot told reporters in a conference …

Congress Daily: The House today rejected an attempt by House Education and the Workforce ranking member George Miller, D-Calif., to force the chamber to take a recorded vote on the Labor Department’s rewritten overtime pay regulations. The House voted 222-205 to table Miller’s motion to instruct conferees on the FY04 Labor-HHS appropriations bill, legislation that was rolled into last year’s omnibus spending bill but whose conference was never officially closed. A spokesman for House Majority Leader DeLay called the …

How to Leverage the Fact that Democrats are Right on Everything Matt Stoller is a communications consultant, and edits BOPnews at www.bopnews.com. He can be reached at matt@bopnews.com. It’s frustrating to be a Democrat these days. Not just because, being in the minority, we lose, though we do. And not just because the other side is able to promote an agenda that every fiber of our beings just intuitively knows is dishonest and about centralizing power in the hands …

The fall-woman to be has a little chat with the Washington Post. The U.S. general who was in charge of running prisons in Iraq told Army investigators earlier this year that she had resisted decisions by superior officers to hand over control of the prisons to military intelligence officials and to authorize the use of lethal force as a first step in keeping order—command decisions that have come in for heavy criticism in the Iraq prison abuse scandal. Brig. …

DeLay (The Hill): House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) continued his ferocious counter-offensive against Democrats yesterday, accusing them of trying to gain political advantage from the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. DeLay picked up yesterday where he left off on Thursday. He dedicated most of his 30-minute weekly meeting with the press to the war. He fielded only two questions that related to other subjects. “We tried their way,” DeLay said, referring to …